Office of Naval Research Awards GEM a 3-Year program with the University of Michigan to develop a thermal-mechanical coupling shell for fire simulation and damage prediction of large scale ship structures

Global Engineering and Materials, Inc. (GEM), is recently awarded a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). This award is on development of a fully coupled fire-structure interaction module via the FDS-Abaqus coupling within GEM's Abaqus Fire Interface Simulator Toolkit (AFIST). GEM has secured commitments for the joint tool development and validation support from FDS development team at NIST and Prof. Lattimer at Virginia Tech, as well as application guidance from SGH and Navy Lab. GEM will collaborate with the FDS development team to enhance and extend the existing solution module using an immersed boundary method (IBM) in FDS and develop a two-way coupling strategy for co-simulation of fire response and structure failure.

Global Engineering and Materials, Inc. (GEM) was recently awarded two Phase I SBIR contracts by the Office of Naval Research to develop a fire simulation and failure response prediction of loaded naval ship structures. GEM along with its team members Virginia Tech, and Middle West State University will implement a time-, stress-, and temperature- dependent material response model and a fire structure interaction model to capture the material softening, characterize a moving boundary within a fire domain, and predict the time to failure. GEM has secured commitments for tool validation support from Virginia Tech and application guidance from NGSB and Navy Lab.

Dr. Eugene Fang, a research scientist from University of Miami, has accepted a Senior Scientist position from GEM and will be on board on March 1. Dr. Fang has done an extensive research and development work on the mesh independent finite element technology for matrix cracking and delamination prediction in composite structures. Dr. Fang will be actively involved in GEM's projects such as fatigue and fracture damage assessment of advanced materials and fluid-structure interaction characterization of advanced structures. Welcome Eugene to be a GEM member.